... Easton, 'Who were they travelling with? ', Lobster 31 (1996), pp. 17-18. 49 Brian Crozier, 'Who inspired Britain's new party? ' The Times, 1 July 1993. Through NATO. The US viewed the rise of the anti-nuclear movement in Europe the 1980s with great alarm: the Iran-Contra documents Easton cited (which also made mention of the formation of the British American Project, in which three members of IEDSS were key players) made clear that the first Reagan administration was seriously afraid that Thatcher, and even Kohl, might not be re-elected. The draft constitution of the new SDP was written in ...

... Jeffreys-Jones points out, that 'an intelligence agency can rarely publicise its successes, so to dwell on failings can be a distortion of the true record'; but even so, it's the negatives that stand out. Anglo-American intelligence agencies have failed to predict wars and uprisings, made international situations worse through their covert interventions (Iran in 1953 is the big example, but there are many others), abused human rights, broken everyone's laws, routinely spied on innocents, been penetrated by enemies as well as betrayed by their friends, and misled, even turned against, their own democracies. In their favour, signals intelligence probably shortened the Second World War, ...

... Maggie's guilty secret John Hughes-Wilson1 O ne of the biggest secrets of Margaret Thatcher's premiership was that during the 1980s she and her Cabinet authorised a long running and totally illegal operation to supply arms secretly to both Iraq and Iran, in contravention of UN resolutions and British law. Billions of pounds worth of arms were exported illegally. Parliament was lied to and British ministers, officials and businessmen made fortunes from the illicit trade before it was discovered and swiftly closed down. The story starts in 1978 with the White House and a behind the scenes deal with Iran. The US, which had supported the Shah of Iran for years, was beginning to find his increasingly oppressive ...

... huge political force. All clerics, Christian, Jewish, Muslim and so on, can and do influence their publics, many are politically active and some at the very top of their societies: e.g . bishops and the Chief Rabbi in Parliament; the Vatican's one time refusal to recognise the state of Israel; the Ayatollahs of Iran; or allegations that Pope Francis may have had a nodding acquaintance with Argentina's Junta. Whatever the truth of the last of these, it will have done Pope Francis' reputation no harm in authoritarian nations such as China where he has Chinese Christians and bishops to protect. In particular, I am astonished by what appears to be an ...

... ' mean different things to different audiences – Sir John mixed his messages. For example, he rightly praised heroic agents who, for their own honourable motives, work with SIS – an attribute to most British audiences; but a liability if a philosophical discussion of the morality of espionage is being held, or you are the current President of Iran.1 7 Unsurprisingly, there was some ludicrous top spin: Sir John tried to give the public the impression they were his sole priority when he has many, including the preservation of the corrupt banking system. He said the 'debate on SIS's role is not well-informed', when the cumulative picture of SIS is truly well ...

... Contents Lobster 60 SUCCESS The CIA in Guatemala, 1954 James Lusher On 18 June 1954, following the positive outcome in Iran a year previously, backed by the President, Congress and the State Department, the CIA launched their next interventionist operation. It entailed replacing the Guatemalan left-wing, reformist leader Jacobo Arbenz Guzman – seen by many in the US as a Communist sympathiser – with a leader who would be more suitable to US interests strategically, politically and economically, the dictatorial General Carlos Castillo Armas. The effects of the US-sponsored coup d'état were deep and far reaching. For the CIA and the Eisenhower administration, 'its triumph confirmed the belief... ...

... are going to have to rely on the banking industry to haul the world economy out of recession so I am very excited about joining such a respected global institution with such an important role to play in the future. ' Lest we forget (2 ) The recent death of British-born David Kimche reminds us that there were days when Iran was not top of Israel and America's 'axis of evil' hit list, but rather the means of lubricating the foreign policy interests of both. Mossad 91 Summer 2010 founding father Kimche was a key figure in setting up the 1985 US arms-for-Iran deal when President Ronald Reagan was needing to find a way to finance the ...

... . Charter, multiple U.N . resolutions, and is a non-signatory to many international treaties, most notably WMD and the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Currently, the U.S . and its garrison state (or is it the tail wagging the dog on this one?) are hypocritically and shamelessly targeting Iran, a NPT signatory, for destruction. The U.S . 's greatest champion of the 'war on terror', Israel is an increasingly dangerous and regionally destabilising outlaw in its own right, acting with military impunity in multiple instances. Its contemptous greater Israel ambitions are likely to prove a source of future regional troubles and an ...

... criticism? Reading the rest of the book the same question recurred. Who is she fooling – herself or her readers? I find it hard to tell: so much of it reads like Mary Poppins meets Adrian Mole. For example, she describes how she travels with a largely American group of Aspen Institute people to meet the Shah of Iran whose 'father had occupied the throne in a bloodless military coup'. Wasn't there just a bit more to the CIA's Operation Ajax than that, Shirley? Or this. When arriving for the well-trailed and hugely publicised meeting with fellow Gang members Roy Jenkins and William Rodgers at David Owen's Limehouse home in 1981 to publish their joint ...

... : if one can't feed a story to state-controlled media, play it off the international media, knowing the local press will feel honour bound to report the coverage. 'Our one access to daylight was the US media and its knock on to the Filipino media … It was a huge, huge stitch-up. '1 6 Iran 2009 H arding's description of the events of Manila 1986 may shed some light on the still under-explored Iranian elections of 2009 and on the uncertainty in the days and weeks which followed.1 7 The re-elected Iranian President ( 'no gays in Iran') Ahmadinejad1 8 has – since his success in holding power in ...